The ‘price’ of sex has dropped to new record lows with an increasing number of women bed-hopping during dates, without expectations about long-term commitments, social psychologists have revealed.

The ‘price’ of sex has dropped to new record lows with an increasing number of women bed-hopping during dates, without expectations about long-term commitments, social psychologists have revealed.

More than 25% of young women are giving it up within the first week of dating, increasing the pressure on other women and changing the expectations of men, the report said.

"The price of sex is about how much one party has to do in order to entice the other into being sexual," the New York Post quoted Kathleen Vohs, of the University of Minnesota, who has authored several papers on ‘sexual economics’, as saying.

“It might mean buying her a drink or an engagement ring. These behaviors vary in how costly they are to the man, and that is how we quantify the price of sex,” she added.

Researchers also found a full 30% of young men’s sexual relationships involves just sex, and no romance — no wooing, dating, goofy text messaging.

However, if sex continues to be cheap over the course of multiple relationships, it will only add to men’s reluctance to commit, warns Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Sexual strategies for making men ‘fall in love’ typically backfire, because men don’t often work like that,” Regnerus says. Thus, he says, its time for women to return the balance of sexual power in their favour by stop putting out.